Strangers Open Hearts to Boy After Tragedy

Offers began pouring in last Saturday, the day after 12-year-old Michael Long stood up at his sixth-grade graduation and thanked his classmates and teachers for helping him through the tragedy of his grandmother’s murder.

They haven’t stopped.

There have been invitations to summer camp, offers of free computer lessons and computer paraphernalia. There have been pledges of money, one coming from a caller who has promised to send $100 a month for the next year.

On Wednesday, three days after it opened, the scholarship fund established in Michael’s name at the Figueroa Street branch of the Bank of the West showed a total of almost $5,000.

Bank officials said they have been deluged with checks--from $10 and $25 donations by people who were touched by Michael’s story to larger gifts. Among them are a $1,000 check from songwriter Burt Bacharach and $50 from actor Ricardo Montalban.

Triple Stabbing

Michael, who now lives with a second cousin, lost the only mother he had ever known when his grandmother and two other inhabitants of their home on South Oxford Avenue were stabbed to death on June 6. At the movies when the triple slaying took place, Michael returned hours later to see police in the neighborhood and his house encircled in yellow police tape.

He gave police information that helped lead to the arrest of his uncle in connection with the fatal stabbings and then, taking from a litany of lessons he said his grandmother taught him, he decided to go on with the rest of his life.

The straight-A student returned to classes at the 24th Street School the next Monday; last Friday he graduated at the top of his class.

Michael is in summer school preparing for the start of seventh grade next fall at Audubon Junior High School. His immediate plans are uncertain, said Marva Scranton, the boy’s second cousin. Scranton took Michael to live with her, her husband and their four children the day after the murders.

“We’ve gotten so many wonderful calls,” Scranton said. “It has been incredible, something we will remember all our lives. I think he is going to be all right.”

Money collected through the scholarship fund will be used for Michael’s college education.